Iceland Ruminations

‘Do they have mountains in London?’ asked a girl from South Korea, as our breakfast boiled in a bubbling sulphuric hot spring. An odd question normally, but today we were standing in a cloud of natural steam on Iceland’s south coast; a country where a mountain is always in your eye line, and a double rainbow’s appearance is scarcely worth mentioning.

While many people know Iceland for its quirks -  the delicacies of fermented shark and sheep’s head, its lack of a standing army, Bjork’s wondrous hairstyles, and the location of an unpronounceable volcano whose ashy emissions caused air traffic uproar in 2010 - this little island on the Mid Atlantic Ridge also boasts a collection of the most incredible landscapes; boiling geysers, pounding waterfalls, black sand beaches and iceberg lagoons. Our volunteer group, based for two weeks in Reykjavik, had decided to visit as many of these places as we could.

Sitting in our hire cars, munching on freshly hard-boiled eggs, we headed next to Gígjökull, one of the glacial tongues now steadily melting after Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption last year. Part of the sixth largest glacier in the country, it hangs between two mountainous peaks like a draped tea towel. The sun was brilliant, the air crisp and clean, and though my fingertips and ears remained chilly, the exhilaration from scaling a glacier created more than adequate central heating. There are many tours offering hikes across the glacier, but we disregarded the need for crampons and ropes - my trusty fleece-lined Doc Martens did the job just fine as I leapt from icy peak to icy peak. Though, alas, not quite with the nimble agility I’d hoped for, as the black sandy dirt that covered these little bergs was prone to skidding. After unceremoniously falling up a particularly steep crest, I grabbed a handful of the offending stuff and discovered a pungent, ashtray-like aroma arising from it, not dissimilar to how my hair often smells after waiting at a smoky late night bus stop. This is actually volcanic ash, so fine it resembles sand grains, which still lightly covers parts of southern Iceland like blackened icing sugar.

We saw a dark space in the distance: the entrance to a cave, which had formed inside the glacier, due to the incessant melting. At first only big enough to crawl through (here my fear of small spaces immediately kicked in), the glacier soon expanded to allow us standing room in a spacious blue green cavern. A vast volume of frozen water hung above us, secured only by the sheer force of its own weight - and melting rapidly through its centre. The cavern looked more like a film set than the fleeting natural wonder it really was. 

Such is the nature of Iceland. Its form may often be transient, but the impression it leaves is firmly indelible - and every memory is normally dotted with the country’s ubiquitous sheep. The heads of which are, according to Icelanders, just as delicious as my breakfast eggs.